Thursday September 8, 2011 Yellowstone Day 3: Geysers, Geysers, Geysers!

Typical Geyser in the Norris Geyser Basin

       On our 3^rd day, we decided to visit the geyser basins north of Old Faithful. Our 1^st stop was the Norris geyser basin. It turned out to be quit a large basin as we were there at least 2 hours and must have walked about 2 miles. This place had everything, geysers, hot springs, steam vents, and mud pots. Every feature is different, but by then, we started getting “geysered out”.
        There is a huge hot spring that I remembered visiting back in the 1970s and I wanted to see it again. It is as large as a lake, but I wasn’t sure about the name or where it was, so we stopped by the bookstore to find out. There was a picture of it on the cover of one of the books. It was called the Grand Prismatic Spring and it was on our way back to the RV Park. We passed by the Lower Geyser Basin and didn’t stop as we both agreed that we had seen enough geygers for one day.

Hot Spring in Norris Geyser Basin

Excelsior Geyser (Huge!)

        To get to Grand Prismatic Spring from the parking lot, we crossed the Firehole River on a foot bridge. Right next to the bridge, there was a thick stream of colorful water flowing down the embankment into the river. The temperature of the water in the hot spring is at the boiling point, so I wondered how warm the river water was. I was tempted to walk down to the river and put my hand in to find out, but being a good, law abiding citizen; I obeyed the signs, which read “stay on the path”. We came upon another large hot spring there called the Excelsior Geyser. I liked this hot spring because it was large and colorful and from the boardwalk, you could look down into its bubbling depths from the high walls which surrounded it on the high side. The Grand Prismatic Spring disappointed me because the boardwalk was slightly lower than the hot spring, so all you could see was a huge cloud of steam. We were told that if we hiked the trail on the far hillside, we could see the hot spring, but it was getting late and our feet were getting tired, so we were satisfied at looking at the picture.

Grand Prismatic Spring (Actual spring in is in the background)